


Stiles and the Beanstalk

by Siriusstuff



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempt at Humor, Crack, Fairy Tale Parody, Fluff, Gerard is the giant, Jack and the Beanstalk - freeform, Jackson is a rooster, Lydia is a hen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Some profanity, some non-graphic references to eating people, the Sheriff is not a sheriff (yet?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 09:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7430821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siriusstuff/pseuds/Siriusstuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time in the imaginary land of Beaconia lived a poor widower named John and his son, whose name was Stiles.</p>
<p>One morning John took his son aside.</p>
<p>“Stiles,” he said, “I want you to take the cow to market and sell it. I’m sick of the sight of it. We’ve never gotten a single drop of milk from the goddamn thing.”</p>
<p>A Jack and the Beanstalk AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stiles and the Beanstalk

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up the other morning with the title "Stiles and the Beanstalk" in my head. I used the 19th Cen. version of the fairy tale as recorded by Joseph Jacobs, and adapted it as I pleased. The result is nothing but crack with a little bit of fluff.

Once upon a time in the imaginary land of Beaconia lived a poor widower named John and his son, whose name was Stiles.

One morning John took his son aside.

“Stiles,” he said, “I want you to take the cow to market and sell it. I’m sick of the sight of it. We’ve never gotten a single drop of milk from the goddamn thing.”

The cow’s name was Jeff.

“Dad,” Stiles said, “I’ve been telling you for years, I don’t think Jeff is a cow. I don’t think he’s even a member of the bovine family. He may not even be a mammal.”

“Fine. Whatever,” his father said. “Just get it out of my sight. Take it to market and see what you can get for it. I’m tired of living off just the beans from our garden.”

“OK, Pop. See ya later,” Stiles replied, then he went to their little shed, put the halter on Jeff, and started down the road to the market.

Being an imaginary place, distances in Beaconia were rather indeterminate. Stiles walked a long way and still wasn’t halfway to the market.

He noticed a strange man standing alongside the road.

“Good day to you, Stiles,” the man said. “And where are you off to today?”

Ignoring everything he’d ever been taught about stranger-danger, especially when the stranger already knew his name, Stiles answered, “To market, to sell Jeff, our ‘cow.’”

He made air quotes when he said “cow.”

“Oh, that seems a fine thing,” the man said. “And you seem a fine looking young man for selling a cow.”

“I don’t think Jeff’s actually a cow,” Stiles admitted, choosing to ignore the remark about his looks.

“Tut!” the man exclaimed. “Of course he’s a cow. Look at all those legs. In fact, I’d like to trade for your cow. I’ll teach him to fly and he can join my flying goat and my flying pig in my flying petting zoo.”

Yes, Stiles most definitely should have remembered what he’d been taught about stranger-danger.

However, “Trade?” was all he said.

“Yes!” The man replied. “But first, can you answer this riddle of mine? I wonder if you know how many beans make five?”

The strange man squinted like he’d just asked a mysterious and difficult question.

“Uhhmm, five?” Stiles answered.

“Correct!” the man shouted. “See? You are as bright as you are fine looking.”

Stiles gulped.

“Here,” the man went on. “In exchange for your cow take these _very special_ beans. Just plant them and you’ll see. If they disappoint you, you can find me in town. People call me Deaton.”

“Deaton, the guy with the flying petting zoo. Sure,” Stiles said.

He looked at the five beans in his hand. They appeared ordinary. But his dad did say “see what you can get” for their stupid not-cow. And at least they’d have more beans to plant and eat.

What’s more, he could finally get away from the weird bean dude.

So Stiles took the beans from the man, handed him the halter and turned back towards home.

 

“BEANS?!” his father roared. “ _BEANS_ , Stiles? “

“Beans are good for you, Dad,” was all Stiles said, deciding for the time being to leave out any mention of the man on the road.

His father, angrier than Stiles had ever seen him, hurled the beans out the window with one last ear-shattering bellow, “ **BEANS**!”

It was near dusk by then and Stiles got sent to his bed in the attic, no supper for him—which was fine with Stiles because he was tired of eating beans too, if he was honest.

Brooding about how to make things better with his dad Stiles fell asleep.

When he woke in the morning there was something odd about the view from his little room’s window: it was blocked by a thick tree trunk that had never been there before. Looking closer Stiles realized it wasn’t a tree trunk at all. It was a giant vine, a bunch of vines actually, twined together into one mighty one. Looking out the window and then up, Stiles saw the vine reached into the sky.

Donning some pantaloons, a shirt and boots, Stiles did what anyone in any imaginary land where anything can happen would do, especially when they were the curious type like him: he reached out his window, grabbed one of the ropey tendrils all along the vine’s height, and started climbing.

He’d certainly seen enough beanstalks in his young life to realize that this was a beanstalk too, just an extremely gigantic one.

In accordance with the principles of fairytale land, Stiles soon had ascended to such an altitude he was climbing through clouds. When he reemerged into daylight again he saw a wondrous land of lofty white mountains, which Stiles realized were cloud tops.

Not all that far away was a hut, which appeared very large and sitting very firmly upon the clouds.

“Weird,” Stiles said, though no weirder than anything else that ever happened, really.

He jumped from the stalk and started toward the hut. He’d no sooner reached its door when it opened wide and a woman stepped out.

She glared at him.

“Good day, ma’am,” Stiles spoke. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday and I just climbed an overgrown plant to get up here. Could I get a snack or something? My blood sugar’s kind of low.”

“First,” the woman said, “You’re more likely to _become_ a snack than get one here. This is the home of Gerard the Giant. He—“

Before she could say more there was a heavy shaking all around.

“Oh, shit,” the woman whispered. “He’s coming. You better hide.”

“Where?” Stiles cried.

“Get in the oven,” she said, holding open its door.

“Uhhmm… maybe somewhere else?” Stiles suggested.

“There’s no time!”

So Stiles climbed into the oven and hoped for the best just as a huge old monster, Gerard the Giant, entered grumbling,

 

_“Fee fie foe fum,_

_I smell the blood of a lousy bum._

_Be he alive or be he dead,_

_I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”_

 

“Nonsense,” Stiles heard the woman say. “You’re just smelling the leftovers of that census-taker you ate last night. Now go get washed and I’ll serve lunch.”

The giant stomped away, grumbling still.

“That,” Stiles said, once he was out of the oven, “is fucked up.”

“Tell me about it,” was the woman’s answer.

“He’s your husband?” Stiles asked.

“Oh hell no,” she said. “I’m his servant, his captive. He’s got my fiancé held hostage somewhere in this place. He won’t eat him as long as I keep working for him.”

“Sorry for your troubles…” Stiles paused.

“Erica,” the woman filled in.

“Erica. Yeah, sorry for your troubles, Erica, but I think I’m getting my ass back down the beanstalk.”

“Better wait till after he eats. He always falls asleep after he eats. You’ll be safer then.”

She ladled broth with chunks of meat into a bowl.

“That’s not… _people_ , is it?” Stiles wondered, worried.

“Ox stew,” Erica answered. “Want some?”

Stiles accepted a small bowl of it. He passed on the bread Erica offered with it though.

He hid in the cupboard to eat his stew while the giant noisily slurped and chewed his meal.

Instead of falling asleep afterwards the giant stomped into another room, returning with bags he dropped onto the table. Stiles peeked from the cupboard and watched as the giant counted out gold coins from the bags _then_ fell asleep snoring where he sat.

“If I promise to come back and help free your fiancé,” Stiles proposed, “mind if I help myself to one of those bags?”

“If you can manage without becoming a between-meal snack, be my guest,” Erica said.

So Stiles grabbed a bag of gold, hurried from the giant’s hut and down the beanstalk.

 

“Dad!” he shouted when he saw his father staring at the beanstalk.

“That thing’s casting a lot of shade. Gonna be hell on the bean patch,” his dad surmised.

“Pops, our bean eating days are over!” Stiles announced sifting his fingers through the many coins in the bag and letting the gold shimmer before his father’s wondering eyes.

“Now go into town and order yourself a four course dinner at the inn. Spend the night there if you choose,” Stiles said to his father.

But his dad returned after nightfall, albeit looking quite contented, upon a horse with a fine saddle. He carried a box of cigars and wore a purple velvet smoking jacket.

Stiles was awake before dawn, climbing the beanstalk again. When he reached the giant’s hut this time Erica was nowhere to be seen but he saw the grizzled old ogre already at his table with an elegant red-feathered hen in front of him.

“Lay!” the giant commanded and the hen laid an egg on the spot. The egg gleamed gold.

“Holy shit,” Stiles remarked to himself, watching where the giant returned the hen, which Stiles immediately snatched for himself before clambering once more down the beanstalk.

“I don’t suppose I could ask of favor of you, young man, considering I’m not squawking my head off about being stolen,” the hen spoke, startling Stiles so badly he nearly lost his grip and fell.

“Holy shit,” he cursed again. “You can talk!”

The hen rolled her eyes and replied, “I lay golden eggs. Any fool can talk.”

Stiles was speechless.

“Or not,” the hen continued. “My name is Lydia.—So, my favor?”

“Of—of course!” Stiles assured her. “I’m Stiles. At your service.”

“A bit of an inconvenience for you, I suppose, since you’re halfway down this hypertrophied legume. But could you go back and retrieve a,” here Lydia paused, “ _friend_ of mine too? Jackson the rooster.”

“Do you need him to lay the golden eggs?” Stiles wanted to know.

“ _I_ possess the auriferous ovaries, Stiles. Jackson and I have an… an _arrangement_.”

With his home in sight below Stiles explained, “I have to go back up there anyway. I promised I’d help Erica free her fiancé. I suppose I could bring back your rooster boyfriend, too.”

“Please, I prefer the term _paramour_.” Lydia clucked. “He’ll be of some value to you too. He’s _very_ pretty. Certain to beautify your homestead.”

“Of course, Lydia,” Stiles promised. Who was he to argue with a talking golden-egg-laying hen?

And Stiles could certainly appreciate a pretty cock himself as well.

“I know where they are,” Lydia said next.

“’They’?” Stiles replied, surprised.

“Erica’s beau. His name is Boyd. The giant keeps him in a cage in his bedchamber. The cage keys hang from one of the bedposts. And there’s another prisoner in there, too. I believe his name is Derek.”

 

What should Stiles behold, back on the ground, but a team of carpenters building a large addition to their shack and thatchers re-thatching the roof, even incorporating wildflowers into it.

His father came out the door to the yard. Now he had on an embroidered coat and a cap that looked like shimmering silk. Also, he was smoking a cigar.

“Son!” he cried over the sound of hammering and sawing. “Good to see you! What’s that you got there now?”

“Uhhmm, it’s a chicken, Dad. A special chicken,” Stiles answered.

“Special, eh? Just like those beans!” his father laughed, with a hopeful tone.

Stiles set Lydia in the grass between himself and his dad.

“Lay?” he said, hesitantly.

Lydia cocked her head at him. Nothing else happened.

“ _Lay_ ,” he pronounced.

Lydia clucked and stepped forward, revealing a golden egg in the grass.

“Son!” John crowed, picking up and admiring the glistening egg. “Let me apologize for calling you a dolt and a blockhead and an absolute idiot the other day.”

“You didn’t call me any of those things, Dad,” Stiles said.

“Oh, yes I did,” his father replied. “Now, let’s get this little lady here a hen house under construction immediately.”

“Cluck cluck,” Lydia said.

“I have to make one more trip up the stalk, Pop,” Stiles told his father.

“Whatever’s necessary, Son. I won’t stand in your way. But have some dinner first. I hired a cook!”

 

On his third trip up the beanstalk Stiles carried rope and a knife. Thanks to Lydia he was thoroughly briefed on the layout of the giant’s hut as well as the giant’s daily routine.

But when he reached the hut to find Erica sweeping the floor and he asked her where was the giant, expecting to hear he was out slaughtering oxen, instead Erica said, “He’s been on a rampage since discovering his prize hen flew the coop. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“I’m afraid I would not,” Stiles said. “But speaking of coops, is that where I’d find Jackson the rooster?”

“You mean the second prettiest cock I’ve ever seen?” Erica replied. “Yes, that rooster would be in the coop. Do you plan to steal him too?”

“I’m doing a favor for a lady. Just like I’m doing a favor for you. Boyd’s being held in the giant’s bedchamber.”

Erica clapped her hands together and pressed them to her bosom. “Oh!” she cried. “Then let’s hurry there!”

“Not yet,” Stiles said, stretching rope taut across the doorway, near the floor, knotting the ends securely in place with assistance from Erica whose years as a giant’s servant had made her arms quite strong.

The door to the giant’s bedchamber was very tall and its doorknob out of reach.

“This dump is so drafty there’s bound to a crack we can squeeze through,” Erica assured.

Sure enough there was.

On the floor by the giant’s bed two cages stood. When the occupant of one saw Erica he cried, “My beloved!” while Erica cried “My darling!” Then with their arms through the bars they held onto each other and kissed with extraordinary passion.

Stiles stood before the other cage which contained the most beautiful person he’d ever laid eyes on. Stiles didn’t know where to look first: at the prisoner’s eyes, which were flecked blue and green and sparkled like a forest reflected in a running stream; or upon his handsome beard, which made Stiles’s fingers long to stroke it; or at his teeth which made Stiles think of an adorable woodland bunny’s.

“You must be Derek,” Stiles said, nearly panting.

“That I am,” Derek answered, his mouth in a coy smile.

“I’m Stiles, to your rescue.”

When he shook Derek’s hand he didn’t want to let go. It seemed neither did Derek.

But another shaking had begun.

The giant’s bed frame had collapsed under his awful weight but its bedposts, while askew, were still more or less upright. Keys hung on a cord from one. Climbing atop Stiles’s shoulders Erica knifed through the cord so the keys dropped free.

As the captives were released from their cages came a familiar stomping down the hall, accompanied by a familiar grumbling, for Gerard had returned from his latest rampage.

 

_“Fee fie foe fum,_

_I smell you there and here I come._

_I’ll squash you flat, I’ll squeeze you dead,_

_Then eat your guts on toasted bread.”_

“I repeat,” Stiles said, “this guy is _fucked up._ ”

“Think so?” Derek retorted, just as the bedchamber door burst open though Erica, Boyd, Derek and Stiles sneaked out the crack that had allowed the rescuers’ entry—though not before Stiles stabbed the knife deep as he could into the giant’s bony shin.

Raging, the giant hopped up and down on his unwounded leg, so violently the hut trembled top to bottom and started falling to pieces.

Out the hut’s doorway the foursome escaped, pursued by the still raging giant. That doorway was too low for him to get through without stooping. The ropes Stiles and Erica had stretched across it tripped him too, so that he fell flat into the yard like a tall, tall tree, with a sound like a dreadful thunderclap.

Though that clap might have been the old fiend’s hip fracturing, who knows.

Stiles pointed the way to the beanstalk but then shouted he had to make one final stop.

There was uproar in the chicken coop due to all the ruckus in the vicinity but the rooster was plain to see, being the only glum-looking fowl in the coop but also the most gorgeous with red, yellow and black-colored tail feathers.

“Are you Jackson? Can you talk too?” Stiles asked.

“Cock a doodle doo,” came the reply.

“I’m bringing you to Lydia. That alright with you?”

“Cock a doodle _doo!”_ Jackson crowed, letting Stiles take him under an arm as they rushed to the beanstalk.

Gerard was still struggling to his feet.

Derek was waiting for Stiles at the beanstalk, holding out a hand to help him climb on.

Using the tendrils to rappel their way down, the quartet hurried to earth. But soon enough the beanstalk’s quaking and shifting meant the giant had found them out and was following them still.

Reaching the ground, “Dad!” Stiles shouted, “Get all the axes!”

While Stiles and Derek chopped low at one side of the beanstalk, Erica and Boyd chopped higher on the other.

Stiles’s dad only looked on, not wanting to get bean-sap on his new shirt and leggings.

“Why do you happen to have so many axes?” Derek asked Stiles, between powerful blows.

“Clearance sale at the axe-smith’s,” Stiles answered. But the truth was fairytale law never failed.

 Soon the great stalk began tilting, leaning farther and farther until the sound of a terribly loud snap cracked through the air.

The giant clung to the stalk as it toppled, his holler echoing, “ _Fee fie foe fuu-uuu-uuu-uuck!”_ till he plunged far off the coast and into the ocean where he drowned.

The magic that made the beanstalk, as magic will, instantly came to an end when the beanstalk snapped and fell. The many vines that had twisted together withered and unraveled, so that by the time they hit the ground they were no more than shriveled little stems.

“Welcome to Beaconia!” John greeted the newcomers, his arms wide, when the hullabaloo was over.

Erica and Boyd, their arms round one another, invited the others to their wedding, soon as they found a house to live in.

John gave them some gold, an early wedding gift, to help them get started.

In the yard Jackson the rooster strutted around Lydia who gave Stiles a wink when she’d caught his eye.

“I haven’t thanked you yet, for rescuing me,” Derek said to Stiles.

“I know why Gerard kept Boyd captive, but why you?” Stiles wanted to know.

“We were his action figures,” Derek explained. “He’d dress us up as knights or pirates and make us fight each other with fake swords.”

Stiles frowned, rested his hand on Derek’s shoulder in sympathy and Derek lay his hand on top of Stiles’s.

“I used to be a woodsman up there, till the giant captured me,” Derek said.

“You could be a woodsman down here. You see we’ve got plenty of axes.”

“True.”

“And my dad’s expanding our house, so you can live here with us. But,” Stiles looked down, a little shy suddenly, “you could stay in my room… till the new addition’s ready.”

“I’d like that very much,” Derek said.

They pressed their foreheads together and held each other’s hands, already in love of course.

 

“Cock a doodle doo!” Jackson crowed proudly, as he did at the crack of every dawn.

Stiles decided he really had to have a talk with Lydia to make Jackson chill with the sunrise crowing.

He rolled to his side to face the still sleeping form of Derek. He pulled up the coverlet but held it high first, for a look at his lover’s lovely bare body. Then he settled the coverlet over them both and snuggled close, kissing the beautiful face before him so that Derek smiled in his sleep.

Life had never been better.

John had declared he was running for mayor. Or maybe for sheriff.

Erica and Boyd now lived in a little cottage not far down the road. Boyd had taken up blacksmithing. Erica talked about opening a nursery school.

In the garden Stiles grew cabbages and turnips, cucumbers and carrots, onions and leeks. There was only a single bean plant but more for remembrance than for anything else.

Stiles had learned there were far more pleasant things to climb than beanstalks.

Derek yawned and pulled Stiles closer, nuzzling into his neck with a deep, pleased hum.

They lived happily ever after.


End file.
